Posted
by
Zonk
on Tuesday November 21, 2006 @01:34PM
from the only-as-much-as-you-are-bill dept.

nd01 writes "According to Gamepolitics.com, Bill OReilly has a few choice words for gamers and computer geeks in general. The well-known conservative pundit has harsh words for iPod owners, gamers, the PS3, and all of us 'disconnected from reality' by modern technological contrivances."
From the article: "Basically what you have is a large portion of the population, mostly younger people under the age of 45, who don't deal with reality — ever. So they don't know what day it is; they don't know temperature it is; they don't know what their neighbor looks like. They don't know anything... because they are constantly diverted by a machine. Now what this does is it takes a person away from reality because they've created their own reality..."

"Basically what you have is a large portion of the population, mostly younger people under the age of 45, who don't deal with reality -- ever. So they don't know what day it is; they don't know temperature it is; they don't know what their neighbor looks like. They don't know anything... because they are constantly diverted by a machine. Now what this does is it takes a person away from reality because they've created their own reality.

Even if this weren't Bill O'Reilly, it would be kind of silly for some multi-millionaire radio/TV personality to claim that normal schmucks (by comparison) don't deal with reality. I may play games, but I still have to worry about paying the bills, where dinner is going to come from, and how I'm going to get to work.

I don't know anything about Bill O'Reilly's origins, since I only watch him for a laugh now and then, but if he were ever part of reality he left it long ago for the greener pastures of celebrity, albeit minor celebrity.

"I don't know anything about Bill O'Reilly's origins, since I only watch him for a laugh now and then, but if he were ever part of reality he left it long ago for the greener pastures of celebrity, albeit minor celebrity."

Know why this view is always the case? Because "computer nerds" or technology geeks in general are always criticized for being disconnected from reality. Technology is our hobby, and most people have lives outside of their hobby.

Why is it that you don't hear about NBA stars disconnected from reality? All they do is live in their celebrity. They live, breathe, and eat basketball. When the day is done, they go out to clubs in expensive cars and live the life of a celebrity. Are these people just as disconnected from reality? Absolutely. Are all NBA stars like this? Nope, because its a generalization.

I'm sure there are some computer geeks disconnected from reality, but so are plenty of other people, who are into plenty of other things.

It all comes down to O'Reilly being an idiot and looking to generate some publicity with off-the-wall statements.

"Why is it that you don't hear about NBA stars disconnected from reality? All they do is live in their celebrity. They live, breathe, and eat basketball. When the day is done, they go out to clubs in expensive cars and live the life of a celebrity. Are these people just as disconnected from reality?"

Good question, my answer is: because people are normally afraid of what they don't understand. Sports are easy to understand, every idiot can understand sports. But looking at strange code on a computer screen or playing games is not familiar to older generations and they react accordingly with fear and accusations of witchcraft.

I don't. I mean, I understand playing sports; that's fun, but I don't get sports fandom. It's one thing to cheer for a friend or family that's playing a game but to be emotionally involved with a bunch of rich guys playing a game with a ball is just weird.

Bad assumption there. Are your lack of social skills caused by your gaming, or is your attraction to gaming a side effect of having poor interpersonal skills? The reason a lot of people got into gaming was BECAUSE the lack of social interaction with large groups of people they didn't want to interact with. The jocks didn't game. The preps didn't game. The teachers didn't game. The fucking pundits didn't game.He's like my great grandfather bitching about my grandpa and those other kids spending all the

It's especially funny because it's O'Reilly in his characteristic hypocrtical form [thinkprogress.org].;) Reminds me of all of the times he's denounced Fox programs (esp. when he thought they weren't Fox programs).

Long Island suburbia. Wikipedia indicates that the only job outside of journalism he's ever held was high school teacher for two years. He went to Marist and Boston University, and has an M.A. in Broadcast Journalism. What a real, blue-collar working man he is.

O'Reilly has lived in his own reality for so long that he doesn't realize how disconnected he is. He's probably that last person short of Rush Limbaugh who can safely accuse any group of people of being divorced from reality. And for that matter, who's reality is he talking about? His Neo-Con, GOP Cheerleader, Reality? Gimme a break.

we found WMDs in Iraq;
we're winning in Iraq;
the world was created by God approximately 7,500 years ago;
evolution is a liberal fabrication designed to undermine the true faith;
global warming isn't happening, and if it is then it is good for you;
lying about an extra-marital affair is a greater crime than torture, agressive wars, or illegal spying;
any fact can be refuted by yelling !!SHUT-UP!! really loudly; AND...
people who get their news online are more detached from rea

Listen "Rob T Firefly", if that is your real name:You obviously don't get it.There is a big difference between watching me on Television and being plugged into a computer. I saw that movie "The Matrix". And I didn't understand most of it, but that's not the point.The point is, you don't know who is out there in "cyberspace" spewing their one-sided opinions on various topics. When you are watching MY show, you know you will always get both sides of the story. Don't you know our motto here at Fox news?Go

I disagree. The discussion is in fact about Mr. O'Reilly. If J. Random Nobody made the same comments on his blog, people would pretty much ignore it. O'Reilly makes most of his arguments using appeals to authority (including himself, as an authority).

Seriously, if this was an Ask Slashdot, "Do video games, ipods and technology destroy social networks?" and some person said, "Well, that's what O'Reilly thinks and he's a frothing right-wing nutjob," you'd have a point.

However, I'd argue that this is much more about Bill O'Reilly than it is about his rant. Of course, I've probably just been successfully trolled, because who's going to say that an informal Slashdot discussion about something Bill O'Reilly said isn't allowed bring up the dubious authority of the man himself?

A raving lunatic doesn't need to have every utterance individually refuted in order for someone to know that such ravings aren't likely to be of much value.

Taking every possible point of view solely on its own merits is fine if you have nothing but time, and don't value it. For everyone else, it's reasonable to require some level of positive reputation behind a point before investing any time into considering it.

People haven't "always" been able to carry a music collection with them to listen to, say, while walking down the street. At least, they haven't always been able to do it very easily. They gained this ability with walkman-like devices a few decades ago. This might seem like "always" to you, but O'Reilly is probably a lot older than you are. In fact, recorded music isn't really all that old itself. One might argue that recorded music has diminished the significance of live music performance; after all,

You guys are joking, and I was modded up +5 Funny, but I'm dead serious! I really HAVE received letters for not edging my lawn for several days. No kidding, I have 3 letters about edging my lawn (3 separate occasions, and I DO edge my lawn...twice a month) I have 2 letters about my grass being too tall (I mow it when I edge), 1 letter about a tree our builder installed that was actually approved by these people. Finally, I got a letter about the garden my wife made, that the neighbors actually like, that di

Reality is people from Bill's generation selling our country to corporate interests, destroying our environment, sending our generation off to be killed in Iraq, spending umpteen trillion dollars of money they don't actually have with the full realization that they'll all be dead long before the time comes to pay up and pointlessly banning activities and substances that they only don't partake in because their bodies are too old and frail to allow them to enjoy.

Reality is that his generation is using their last gasps at power to fuck everything up for our generation. Is it any wonder that we want to divorce ourselves from his so-called reality?

Okay, let's not start with the whole, "But look how many people went to Iraq and didn't get killed" argument. That way lies true madness.Yes, there are a lot of people out here (myself included) who don't believe that the Iraq war is serving our country's interests, and no, I don't see that as a problem. I respect most everyone who is fighting over there. They're making great sacrifices and I believe that most of them honestly believe they are trying to make the world a better place. But I also believe

I'm sick of gamers like me being accused of living in a fantasy world. This is the last straw! I'm sending out my long distance Firaga and Doom spells at the next person to make the accusation! I have powers, damn, you. POWERS!

Why just this morning I had to buy gas before work, so I jumped on a turtle and threw its shell at a brick. Unfortunately, no money came out of the brick this time. So I stole a police car and ran over a hooker to get some cash. I got shot by the pimp, but I picked up a backpack with a red cross on it, so it was all good. I did end up 10 mins late to work though.

Jesus was attempting to bring moral values to the people, something that liberals have never done.

We're talking about the same Jesus, right?

Conservatives: tough on crime. Liberals: big on rehabilitation.Typical conservative quote: "You did the crime, now do the time."Typical liberal quote: "Sure, he robbed a store, but his family was starving, and it was a first offence. Go easy on him."Jesus: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." "Go, and sin no more."

Conservatives: big on revenge. Liberals: big on compassion.Typical conservative quote: "We should avenge 9/11 by bombing some serious Islamofascist ass."Typical liberal quote: "We should fight terrorism with aid and diplomacy, not bombs."Jesus: "Love your enemy; do good to those who hate you." "Turn the other cheek."

Conservatives: big on welfare "reform". Liberals: big on welfare.Typical conservative quote: "Handouts create a culture of dependency and encourage people to be lazy."Typical liberal quote: "Welfare is essential to fight poverty and give the children of poor parents a decent chance in life."Jesus: you may draw your own conclusions from the feeding of the 5,000.

Conservatives: hate taxes. Liberals: love taxes.Typical conservative quote: "We must enact a tax relief package to lift the crushing tax burden on our richest citizens."Typical liberal quote: "We must raise taxes to pay for better public services."Jesus: "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." See also Jesus' famous friendship with tax collectors, and the incident of the Widow's Mite, where Jesus approved of a poor woman paying crippling taxes.

And so on. Sorry, but Jesus = Liberal - there's simply no two ways about it.

Do you know of any conservatives who are reccomending stoning women for adultery?Just curious.Jesus also had his desciples carry swords. Why? At one point he tells them to sell their cloak and buy a sword.

I agree that a few conservatives are hypocritical on gender issues. Particuarly, I mean that the laws which compel men to support their children are so horribly enforced, both in the US and in other countries. (I have a friend in Canada whose dad has been horrid in this regard.) Personally, I don't want the government controlling people's medical choices. (My opinions about the morality of said choices are a different issue.) But are you sure that you're assigning their motivation correctly? The most common

There are many ancient sources on the career of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great: the Library of world history of Diodorus of Sicily, Quintus Curtius Rufus' History of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, a Life of Alexander by Plutarch of Chaeronea and the Anabasis by Arrian of Nicomedia are the best-known. All these authors lived more than three centuries after the events they described, but they used older, nearly contemporary sources, that are now lost.

Doesn't that really depend on the "gamer" you're talking about?
Sure, there are some pasty-faced unwashed slobs out there who really think they live in Azeroth. But there are a ton of casual gamers who get out, have a real life, etc, etc. People who bring up arguments like this are similar to those that point out that drunks seem to be in taverns or their local liquor shops all the time and do nothing but drink, so therefore all drinkers are bad people.

Addiction to anything can be bad. But painting anyone who indulges in something with the same brush is just ignorant.

I think it's just sad that people accept anything that Bill O'Reilley and his brand of pundits say. Their opinions are based on a simple formula of outrage. They simply find an easy target and then express some sort of outrage against that target. Anybody remember last year's "War on Christmas?"

I wonder if O'Reilley actually believes the things he says or if he understands them to be opinions manufactured for ratings and political results.

"Basically what you have is a large portion of the population, mostly younger people under the age of 45, who don't deal with reality."

What you and people *over* the age of 45 call reality, I call senile dementia, Bill.

I can respond by saying that people of the age group you are talking about are entirely the problem. They're just as divorced from reality as anyone else...and the thing is, that although younger people might be divorced from reality as well, they're not able to take their delusion and from that perspective *enact laws.*

Also, if you really want to go there...younger people on average are a lot more intimate with technological developments, particularly where computers are concerned. We're a lot more likely to understand issues because unlike you and your geriatric peers, we actually have to live with said issues. Your generation aren't the ones who've had to die by the thousands in Iraq...many of you, when you *were* our age yourselves, dodged service...which makes you sending members of my generation off to die that much more disgusting. You're also not the ones who are going to have to deal with the real consequences of what your generation has done to the environment...you'll be dead in 20 years.

You are a sick, deeply degraded human being, Mr. O'Reilly...and you shame yourself on a continual basis with your entirely voluntary ignorance and rock stupidity. The only thing that keeps me from fervently wishing that you and other individuals like you did not exist is the realisation that in doing so, I would myself go down to your level.

Ok, while your starting point was good you went way overboard here:
"Your generation aren't the ones who've had to die by the thousands in Iraq...many of you, when you *were* our age yourselves, dodged service."
See, those that go to Iraq are not drafted, they have chosen to go into the armed forces of their own free will. Making a comparison with someone "his age" dodging service, and dying from a calculated risk is not very good.

Like it or not, hate O'Reilly or not, there is a piece of truth to what he's saying.People now are more separated than they are connected. Through a combination of technology, and paranoia, we've started sealing ourselves off from the world around us. How often do you see kids playing in your neighborhood on a summer's day? I was visiting my folks this summer and I know for a fact the neighborhood they live in is filled with little kids. Not a single one went outside to play the several days I was there

Through a combination of technology, and paranoia, we've started sealing ourselves off from the world around us. How often do you see kids playing in your neighborhood on a summer's day? I was visiting my folks this summer and I know for a fact the neighborhood they live in is filled with little kids. Not a single one went outside to play the several days I was there. This is pretty much the norm.

The news media has made parents more aware of child molesters, and many parents have become so phobic about th

While poorly worded, O'Reilly actually has a point burried beneath his typical inflamatory rhetoric.

Sadly, that's his M.O. - enveloping a micrsoscopic kernel of truth (although most often it's a "perceived truth" aka preconception and stereotype) in endless rhetoric about how he's right, everybody else is wrong and the world going to hell in a handbasket. How he built a little empire on that, I have no idea. IQs must have dropped sharply while I was away.

His M.O worked because it's entertaining for those who agree, and those who disagree watch because he pisses them off so much. Howard Stern perfected the method. Rush Limbaugh has people listening to him just so they can "know what the morons are saying" etc. Pissing people off is a great way to high ratings.

The separated from reality stuff is just like all the people who lament the massive shift from the farm to the city; people don't grow their own food anymore and so forth. Guess what, things change.

Technology or not, people are going to seek the same types of relationships, some deeper than others, etc. The enabling factors provided by technology are probably good in some cases, and probably bad in others.

I yell at the kids in my neighborhood to get off my grass all the time.

Citing online dating services as a way to avoid interacting with people is probably a bad idea.

Lot's of my neighbors are idiots. Now that I have better things to do, I do them.

There have always been social problems, and there always will be, part of what makes life interesting is that people are different, and people that are different are going to occasionally actually notice the fact.

To grossly simplify my opinion on this, I argue that machines are a form of self-perpetuated evolution. Human beings are adding new senses to their bodies which allow them to perceive otherwise invisible stimuli, and communicate over otherwise unbridgable gaps. Caterpillars must think that butterflies look peculiar - especially butterflies with wings made from sewn-together user manuals.

What I don't like is that not being social means you must be a "antisocial misfit". I held a full-day presentation today for about a dozen people, that's hardly introvert. I do get along just fine when I'm out socializing. At the same time, I'm perfectly happy in my own company. There's a certain group of people I would call social addicts, which can't seem to go any significant time without social interaction, which leads them to believe that those that go without are simply misfits who are unable to.

You have some points but basically I think you are making some sweeping generalizations.

"How often do you see kids playing in your neighborhood on a summer's day?"

This is true, but honestly a large part of it comes from the parents. My mom would let us run about the neighborhood on our own when I was 10 or so just so long as we came back for dinner. Most parents are so paranoid about kidnappings, drugs, pedophiles, drunk drivers and other problems the media exaggerates. They want they're kids to be where they can see them or hear them. Not to mention that in households with two working parents, or a single parent - the kids don't get home from school until 5 or 6pm. Then its homework, dinner, bath and maybe just time for a TV show or couple rounds of Super Smash Bros before bed. After school play time has been replaced by after school child care programs or other activities. Weekend programs are much more common as well. My own kid's weekend socializing is primarily through organized sports and educational activities.Kids lives have changed a lot and not just due to video games. Where I live they have a year round program where summer only lasts one and a half months.

"How many of them are social creatures, going out and partying on weekends etc?"

All of the ones I know have some form of social life, be it clubs and partying, wife and family or even church groups.

"When was the last time you sat on your porch and chatted with a neigbor?"Well we don't have a porch, but last night on the front steps and usually a couple times a week. Every once and a while we have some drinks and a laugh together outside the apartment after work. And these are not people I knew before moving into the apartment. Nor are they people with similar interests to me. One is a janitor at a local school. I make it a point to know my neighbors to some degree.

"We don't like to think that maybe we're less social or less connected with the outside world than we should be."

Why are other communication forms besides face to face bad? I agree that physical body and facial cues are absent. Or in IM so is tonality but thats why IM has such a wide range of terminology to offset that.I've made friends in other states and countries through online gaming and while no they could never be my closest or best friends (due to proximity), they certainly have enriched my life. I would say learning first hand from people in other places or situations expands my knowledge of the "outside world" - as in it creates a picture larger than that of my immediate location.Kurt Vonnegut in his last book mentions that virtual communities have no value - and yet he went on to promote the book via an appearance in the game Second Life.Having worked in media and telecommunications all my life I just don't see increased communications as being bad. It's becoming different but that is just a consequence of the changing world. It doesn't necessarily mean it's becoming worse.

I guess the system administrator of the hosted site took Bill's advice, stepped away from his computers, and went out to meet his neighbor and check the weather, since the web server's going up in flames right now...

The "reality" of a family in a small town in Nebraska is quite different from the "reality" that a single person living in a major city experiences. Neither reality is better; they're just different ways of viewing life and its associated recreational or social priorities.

Folks who interact a lot with technology are no different -- they simply have a set of experiences and priorities that differs from other groups of people.

Ok, the Gaming site is DOA, Slashdotted to hell and back. Does anyone know where this quote is coming from? It's not "Talking points" I check the Fox News archive and there's nothing related to gaming on there going back at least 6 months. I don't know if this is in any of his books or not, as i don't own them. Did they interview OReilly? Where is this quote coming from?I guess I'm jaded, but I want confirmation of a quote by ANYBODY before I go off half-cocked and getting all upset over what someone

"Now you have the "knows" and the "know-nots", because if you spend all your youth being prisoners of machines..... you're not going to know anything.... You're gonna fail."

Yuh huh. I'm 26 and I've been playing video games for 20 years. I recently completed a post-graduate program in technical writing (top of my class with high honours) and am employed as a tech writer and sys admin. I also fix PCs on the side.

Video games are the foundation of my full time employment which I enjoy very much. I put up with the drudgery of learning batch files, composing multi-config.sys boot environments, configuring IRQ/DMA/IO ports, memory management, hardware installation, and troubleshooting because the payoff of exciting games was worth the trouble. Games are the gateway to technology because they put a human face on computers.

Does O'Reilly claim that playfighting lion cubs are out of touch with reality? Doesn't play prepare us for real challenges?

Funny that he makes these remarks on television, the medium responsible for "reality" tv, and for Fox, no less, the corporation responsible for the worst of it. I read an article last year in the "Life, etc." section of my local paper that talked about how Americans go out and mingle with their friends disturbingly less often than in the past. After reading this well-thought out piece, my eyes wandered to the bottom of the page, where I saw an infobox entitled What to Watch, which listed the latest in rea

That's right, just because I play video games, everything that I do is defined by that one activity. I have no life, I don't live in the reality.

I wonder what Bill O'Reilly would think, if everyone defined everything that he does now, in the past or in the future by his actions towards his female staff members. He'd probably accuse such persons of being in the liberal conspiracy against him.

.. are disconnected from reality by at least one level. They come in with their parents looking to buy a computer so they can see and speak to their friends two streets away over the webcam. What's wrong with going round to someone's house and asking if someone can out to play, as I did when I was a kid?

He's whining about how young people are turning to get their op-ed info from Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann and everybody else who isn't Bill O'Reilly. So now he's accusing people who don't buy into his world view of being divorced from reality. Whatever, Falafel Bill.

If O'Reilly wants to go after jihadists, he ought to do so in Counterstrike. It'll get him a lot closer to the "action" than being a member of the whining 101st chairborne.

Why is this on Slashdot? A pundit makes some commentary about video games...so? He bloviates about stuff every night, and has for 8+ years. He's in no position to craft laws, no position to do anything about it. This is on Slashdot for two reasons:

1) He mentioned games2) He's considered right-wing by the decidedly left-wing crowd here, and that's bad.

If Bill Maher/Michael Moore/Robert Greenwald come out for/against video games, should that make news on here?

If Bill Maher/Michael Moore/Robert Greenwald come out for/against video games, should that make news on here?

No, but it probably would. Have you noticed the amount of video game stories coming through? We've hated on Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman just as much for their various gaming agendas, along with a whole bunch of minor judges and political figures from either side of the aisle.

What O'Reilly and others are actually upset about is that the "under 45" demographic is spending more time playing games, etc than watching the boobtube. That costs networks money...ad revenue...ratings, etc.

The article should read, "Please stop living in a fantasy game reality and watch the fantasy reality cable TV is offering..."

Addiction to technology? It happens all the time. And not just with Johnny come lately PS3 and the internet. No, sir! Take the telephone. A useful tool. No one would argue that it by itself could hurt you. But taken to extremes, it can consume your life, and you wind up making obscene phone calls and engaging in telephone sex with an underling [google.com], leading to an embarrassing public lawsuit that undermines your holier-than-thou morality crap you like to push as your public persona. I tell you, it's just not worth it. So, just stay away.

O'Reilly values things like knowing what day it is. Why does he value you that? Because in his lifetime, he couldn't function without that kind of information.

People who can function without this information obviously don't need it. This has nothing to do with "reality" or not. In times gone by, you couldn't function very well if you didn't know the current phase of the moon (because that's how people organized time). That's reality, but I bet old Bill has no idea what phase the moon is, nor does he care. In his own way, he's disconnected from reality, but he made that sacrifice so he could devote his attention to connecting to things that matter to him.

Now, he notices that lots of other people are now connecting to things that don't matter to him. Furthermore, they're not connected to things that matter to him. This is okay because, frankly, they're not him, and he's not them. He has a problem with this, probably for a number of reasons, but I can't help but thing his interpretation is a little bit egocentric.

That's not to say that his criticisms are invalid. It is sometimes hard to get by in life without knowing the date, but if someone can do it, then hey... as long as it works.

The young people that O'Reilly says are divorced from reality turned out in record numbers to vote a couple of Tuesdays back, and, horror of horrors, in a stinging rebuff to the current president and his administration, they voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, returning them to power in the congress and in a majority of state legislatures and governorships. You could only possibly do something like this if you're divorced from reality, in Bill's mind, anyway. Because, reality is, terrorists are around every single corner, and only George W. and the GOP can protect you from them.

And of course, in Bill's head, the technology is to blame, because all of these crazy kids with their iPods and Nintendo DSs and the like got their political info from websites, horrible, liberal, progressive, blogspherical, divorced-from-reality websites.

I guess O'Reilly hasn't heard about reality's well known liberal bias.

While from being outside of the USA I get the impression that the majority of your press is divorced from reality. CNN and even sometimes the NYT get a lot of things wrong with international news (I can't judge your domestic news) and sometimes even NPR sounds like news-lite.

Larry telecommutes. He converses with coworkers via teleconference, and he does his job well. His employers are completely happy with his productivity, and he is happy with his privacy. Larry gets paid by direct deposit. He pays his bills online, and never has a need of services that require him to visit a bank.

When it comes to food, Larry likes variety. He prepares a list from an online product catalog, and four hours later the food arrives, delivered by a local company that specializes in this type of transaction. They also deliver household consumables, such as bathroom supplies. Sometimes Larry wants something ready to eat, though, and of course companies have been delivering pizza, oriental food, indeed most kinds of meals, for decades. He orders clothes, gadgets, and computer equipment online, and the courier companies beat a path to his door.

Larry likes to keep fit, and to that end he has a treadmill, a set of weights and a stair climber, all within his home. He works out six days a week, and never strays from his routine. His health is excellent.

When it comes to socialization, Larry is an online kind of guy. He plays MMORPGs - Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games - and is active in video game player guilds, spending upwards of fifty hours per week interacting with other people in a virtual world. He uses a microphone to talk to players from all over the planet, and is well known in the circles of elite gamers. He even has virtual girlfriends. He is popular with people he has never met in his alternate reality, "real life".

Larry never goes out. He never really physically interacts with anybody. In fact, he hasn't left his home in months.

The question is: can Larry be happy?

For a long time I would have thought that no, Larry couldn't really be happy. After all, man is a social being by nature. From birth, we respond to touch, and to the presence of those around us. We have a need of sex, and possibly of love.

But what is really missing from Larry's life? He has food, shelter, clothing, work, entertainment, physical exercise, a social network, and sex by proxy (through "cybering" with his online girlfriends). He has a full life by his standards.

Many people would look down on his life, but Larry is part of a different scene. He grew up in a world that could be fully realized in isolation, and it is one that most people don't understand. But it is a life that has all of the trappings of a normal one, save for some small variances. Larry may be perfectly suited to his life, and consequently he may be very happy and well-adjusted.

Just because somebody makes lifestyle choices that we don't understand is no reason to conclude that their life is somehow lacking depth or value. The world is changing, and lives are changing with it.

The have-nots are growing. Why are they growing? Because the skill set that is necessary to earn a decent living is being deemphasized in a fantasy world of football games and shooting zombies and all that.... Now you have the "knows" and the "know-nots", because if you spend all your youth being prisoners of machines..... you're not going to know anything.... You're gonna fail.

People here on Slashdot seem to overwhelmingly hate this guy, but the problem is that he's partly right. I live in a small university town, and the number of goo-heads is astonishing. The difference between the people I know who are "plugged in" versus those who are not, is quite pronounced.

I've seen guys who can't even stand properly, but who wobble back and forth like little kids with nervous conditions. --People who can barely make a plate of food for themselves, who have severely limited social skills, (and I'm not talking about getting a girlfriend or boyfriend; I'm talking about people who have a hard time even communicating at all; people who just don't seem to be really there when you look them in the eye.). --I've met videogame/anime/ipod junkies who I would have very honestly mistaken for being mentally disabled if they weren't enrolled in normal university courses. I don't know how the heck any of them are going to get jobs or lives after their parents stop paying their tuition bills.

Compared to those kids who avoid video games and television and ipods and such, the difference is night and day.

This is not to say that electronics are bad. I know a lot of very well socialized people who use Instant Messenger. But the trick is that such people are well-balanced. They don't JUST use computers. They also get outdoors and have real-time, face to face relations with real live people, they are active physically and they enjoy the raw adventure of life. Computers are, as many have pointed out, a part of life in today's culture, but like anything taken in isolation, they can seriously, and I mean seriously mess you up. Anybody who claims differently ought to visit a university campus sometime.

The good news is that it's really just a percentage; not everybody is a drooling pod person. People can choose and they do. Addiction can be actively chosen against.

Yes, let's make a sweeping generalization about "kids these days". Because "oh so many" college students previous to the era of onling gaming didn't fall into other traps in college (negative addiction to drugs, general lazyness)? For those types of students, video games are simply an escape from the fact that they aren't motivated enough or aren't smart enough to get through college.
I note you apparently don't suffer from the same issue. And college graduation rates are up across the board (if not retention percentages).

I disagree with WoW being the cause of that. I've known people drop out at uni with the same disorganisation/lack of personal hygeine, but causes vary from drugs/booze/hating the course and not wanting to admit it, or just being a moron (ok, I made up that last one).

Still, I've seen exactly the same 'symptoms' that people ascribe to WoW existing before WoW ever turned up. In the eighties I knew people who neglected work and school for Pacman and Firebird.

When people don't want to do something, whether they admit it or not, they will distract themselves with something/anything, often becoming obsessed to the point of losing touch with reality. I knew one guy who got that way with scratchcards, he went without food to get them.

People don't change that fast, but maddeningly every knew 'fad' is touted as the cause of problems that have existed for millenia.

No, they sound exactly like most hardcore gamers. But we need to distinguish most hardcore gamers from your run-of-the-mill gamer.

The thing I often find while I grow older is that terms and definitions are having less distinction as time goes one. What's the difference between a gamer and a hardcore gamer or even a casual gamer? You ask 10 people and you'll get 10 different answers.

One persons definition of a hardcore gamer might not be the same as someone else's. I could play WoW 2-3 hours a night and be called hardcore by a person who plays 5 hours a week and 'casual' by someone who plays 8 hours a day and 15 hours on weekends/holidays. Yet, one could define someone with the same term depending not on the criteria of time spent playing but activities done during play. A person who spends 2-3 hours in a raid to get loot could be called 'hardcore' while a person who continues to create new characters and plays them solo all the time, could be considered 'casual'.

I find this is happening on many levels outside of gaming. I was just having a discussion with my fiancee where we where arguing over the same agreement but wanted to call it two different things until we reached a decision to clarify our points by created specific terms to distinguish what we where talking about, since we could not argue points since we were not arguing over the same (but similar) things. Or I could point out former President Bill Clinton's argument that "he did not have sexual relations with that woman" because "sexual relations" was re-defined by him.

Anyone else notice this? This (seemingly) transcendence into generalization or the definition of terms to suit our own points?

Ehh, I thought video games were training grounds for terrorists and school shooters. People are scared of terrorists. Bill is just inconsistant. He's right to an extent though. Video games are fine if you can handle them. but if you have to much invested in them, you can loose track of reality. But then again, books are good if you can handle them, TV news is good in moderation, alcohol is good in moderation. Food is good in moderation. He's just stating the obvious. Now excuse me while I go back to rotting my brain out with the internet. And what's that damned yellow thing outside the window?